Thinking Christian

My post on “The Evolutionists’ Otherwise Practical Promiscuity” stirred up a firestorm, which is no different than I expected. What surprises me is how hard it is for some people to see reality. Maybe I over-complicated it.

My thesis was in the first sentence: “Evolution—the naturalistic kind—is dangerous.” In support of that I referred to a blog piece by evolutionary psychologist Jesse Bering on the moral implications of evolution. (He did not use the word “naturalistic” but it’s clear from the context that was what he meant. For the remainder of this post, when I speak of evolution I am specifically referring to naturalistic evolution.) I went on to discuss what it was about evolution that made it dangerous. Maybe instead I should have just trotted out the clear prima facie evidence.

We can discuss all week whether evolution entails moral nihilism, or whether evolutionists generally adopt that view. The fact remains that Bering could “get on board with this” intellectually:

There’s a strange whiff in the media air, a sort of polyamory chic in which liberally minded journalists, an aggregate mass of antireligious pundits and even scientists themselves have begun encouraging readers and viewers to use evolutionary theory to revisit and revise their sexual attitudes and, more importantly, their behaviors in ways that fit their animal libidos more happily.

Much of this discussion is being fueled by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá’s scintillating new book Sex at Dawn, which explores how our modern, God-ridden, puritanical society conflicts with our species’ evolutionary design, a tension making us pathologically ashamed of sex. There are of course many important caveats, but the basic logic is that, because human beings are not naturally monogamous but rather have been explicitly designed by natural selection to seek out ‘extra-pair copulatory partners’—having sex with someone other than your partner or spouse for the replicating sake of one’s mindless genes—then suppressing these deep mammalian instincts is futile and,

He can believe, based on his evolutionary suppositions,

that we live in a natural rather than a supernatural world, then there is no inherent, divinely inspired reason to be sexually exclusive to one’s partner. If you and your partner want to … [multiple suggested acts, omitted for reasons of decency] … then by all means do so (and take pictures). … Right is irrelevant. There is only what works and what doesn’t work, within context, in biologically adaptive terms….

He can tell the world that there’s nothing holding us back from this except that evolution has placed within us a restraining empathy response. I won’t take time here to draw out the weaknesses of Bering’s position on that, but I did address it in my last post, and I have more to come soon on the same.

He can get a hearing for his virtually pornographic promulgations through a highly regarded science magazine—because it is, he insists, a scientifically based viewpoint.

So one result of naturalistic evolution is that books like Sex at Dawn get scientific endorsement: cautious endorsement, perhaps, but supportive nonetheless; and “liberally minded journalists, an aggregate mass of antireligious pundits and even scientists themselves have begun encouraging readers and viewers to use evolutionary theory to revisit and revise their sexual attitudes and, more importantly, their behaviors in ways that fit their animal libidos more happily.”

It may not be every evolutionist who says this, but it’s not on the bare periphery, either. It’s at SciAm’s website this week. It’s at Princeton, by way of Singer’s influential (and evolutionary-based) opinions on infanticide and “speciesism.”

That’s dangerous. The thesis is demonstrated.

I know what the first objection to this will be: “Christianity is dangerous, too!” It certainly is. Much evil has been done in its name. The question in the case of both evolution and Christianity is whether their evils fit within them, or whether evil has co-opted them by distorting their true nature. It could be that overthrowing morality is really foreign to evolutionary theory. It could be that violent heresy-hunting is foreign to Christianity. If you have thoughts on that, there will be a thread coming soon to discuss it. (Which means that if you say something about it here, I’ll save my response for the coming blog post.)

So I stand firm on my belief that naturalistic evolution is dangerous. The facts speak for themselves.

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Did you know:

There are more slaves today than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Human trafficking is occurring in every nation on earth—including the U.S.

[From The Modern Slave Trade » First Thoughts | A First Things Blog]

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Over at the First Things: Evangel blog we’ve been discussing whether ethics can be sufficiently grounded apart from the existence of God. Here are some links relating to that topic:

From William Lane Craig:

No God? No Good

The Indispensability of Theological Meta-Ethical Foundations for Morality

From my blog:

Hitchens on “Finding Morals Under Empty Heavens”

Hitchens’s Second Question

Grounding for Morality Outside of Theism?

Does It Matter If Morality Is Well Grounded?

The Basis for Moral Realism

Mary Midgley and Ethics

Evolution and Ethics

The End of Right and Wrong?

What Do “Right” and “Wrong” Then Mean?

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With reference to your comment this evening, Dave, please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the problem with finding some ultimate definition of good is the same for all systems, Martin’s included (see the entire thread here for context on that). That is, if one wants to explain what makes a good, one must analyze it in terms of some more fundamental good b. But what makes b a good thing for a to have? Doesn’t that need explaining, too? The answer is, b has some good-making characteristic c. What then makes c a good-making characteristic? Of course it’s d; without c‘s being characterized by d, how could we possibly think of c‘s being good? Okay, then, what makes d good? Well, that’s easy; we know that d is good because it exhibits e. But e‘s goodness needs explaining too! No problem there: e‘s goodness can be analyzed in that it is marked by f, and we know that f in turn is good because of g …

Well, enough already!

There has to be a point of beginning, or of ending, however you want to view the infinite regress represented there. I think actually we must think of it as a point of beginning, because if there is no beginning to the chain, then there is no chain. Beyond that beginning—call it y, for convenience—there is no more fundamental good z, for y really is the beginning. So necessarily, y‘s goodness cannot be analyzed in terms of anything whatever.

Could there be a beginning point like that? If not, then how could there be a chain at all, and how could there be any coherent way to describe anything whatever as good? So then what kind of being could suffice for such a beginning point? I’m quite sure it is God himself. Martin finds that “incoherent.” What then? If not God, what alternative would he propose? The Big Bang? That’s the only other ultimate beginning point I know of that anyone speaks of at all clearly (setting aside the question, what caused that?). Shall we take it that the Big Bang is characterized by that ultimate goodness in which all other goodness finds its source and explanation? Martin, is that your position?

But wait, there could be yet one other option for the ultimate beginning point: the awakening of sentience in organic life. Or perhaps (I’m really trying to work with this now) it is sentience itself. Sentience, with its accompanying desires, wants, needs, satisfactions, pleasures, pains, and so forth, is the ultimate beginning point of goodness, by reference to which all other goodness is described and explained. Or if not sentience, then the original organisms exhibiting sentience. Martin, is that your position?

One further possibility: does the original source of goodness reside actually in those desires, wants, needs, satisfactions, pleasures, pains, etc.? Are these the beginning of the chain that makes all other good, good?

I think it would be salutary for us to turn the tables on you, Martin. You have repeatedly insisted on us providing some analysis of that which cannot be analyzed, God himself. How about it if you try it on your own position. What is good? Please define it without reference to some other putative good that will in turn need defining; please define it in ultimate terms such that when we have your definition, we have it in its full and final form. Thank you.

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The question we’ve been asking in the latter part of this series is whether Christian ethics isn’t just a matter of getting what’s best for ourselves, a thinly disguised game of seeking our own self-interest. After all, the Bible promises rewards for doing good and warns of punishment for doing evil. Maybe Christians who claim to be “doing good” are just as darkly self-serving as anyone.

I’m going to try to finish answering the question now. I fear it will be an incomplete and in some ways superficial stab at it, but it will at least keep the discussion moving forward.

I set the stage for this concluding post last time by focusing on God’s goodness: the glorious goodness that totally suffuses and gives light to all of reality. The universe is really, really good: for it is the moment-by-moment handiwork of a totally, completely good God.

Now then, how does that relate to Christian ethics in real life? Let’s look at some of that real life.

One of my darkest moments as a husband and father was when my now-teenaged children were quite young. Our family was traveling together, we had just checked into a motel room, and I was under considerable pressure to send a report to my boss. There was no such thing as email then, but my laptop computer was set up for sending faxes—or so I thought. I tried and tried, and every time I tried to connect to send that report, the computer would throw up a different error and it would fail. Well, in response to that, I failed even worse. In my frustration, under that pressure, I got hot. I was really, really angry; angry enough to scare my wife and kids badly. She didn’t know what I was going to throw, or in which direction. No one got hurt—physically. But it was awful. It took days, maybe even longer, for everyone to recover.

Right there in that moment, for me and for my family, reality was still good. Good in every way, including moral goodness.

What could that mean? Before answering that I want to stretch the question to its limit. I’m reading a book, After the Ball, written by two homosexual men some twenty years ago to lay out strategy for the gay rights movement. Part of the book is a description of what it was like to be gay in America then. The picture for them was bleak. They describe all the loneliness and anger, they experienced, living in a world they could only see as misunderstanding them badly. For homosexuals, though, reality was (and is) really good. Reality is good even in the midst of however one person, straight or gay, might be behaving sexually with another outside God’s intended purposes. Reality was (and is) good for both the perpetrators and the victims of the notorious priestly sexual scandals. Good in every way, including morally.

I have a friend in jail. For him, reality is really good. I have friends in war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq. For them, reality is really good.

How is reality good in those circumstances? Reality is really good everywhere and at all times, because God is good everywhere and at all times. But I have been saying that “for them” reality is really good. This draws attention to the way we experience reality, and our experience most certainly is not always good. Sometimes it is. When my wife and I hold each other close, when we walk through the woods together, when we celebrate things like our son’s upcoming graduation, reality is really good and it feels good. When someone cares for a hurting neighbor, or travels across town or across the world to share with the needy, reality’s goodness is really expressing itself in that.

So what does it mean in all these different experiences that reality is really good? I don’t mean that we feel or experience it as good, or that it seems good to us. I mean that God in his goodness is actually there. His goodness is brighter than any good we do, and stronger than any evil we might commit or experience. With respect to the good that we do, it is God who lights the way and supports the good by returning good back again. With evil, he also shines the light, but he does so to oppose it and to return punishment. Goodness supports goodness and stands against evil. How could it be otherwise?

God’s goodness was there with me that day in my anger—and stood against it: to correct me, restore me, and to bring healing to our family’s relationships. God’s goodness is there with the gay man, to bring healing to hurts and pains, while yet working to correct sin and restore righteousness. The same in jail and in war zones: God’s goodness is at work to support the good and correct the evil.

The picture as we see it is not so simple, though. We need to look into that more deeply. A humanities professor of mine said that one message of the biblical book of Job is, “God doesn’t practice double-entry bookkeeping.” There is no simple one-to-one connection between the good or evil we do, and the results we see coming back upon us. My professor was not a believer, so he didn’t have any further explanation to offer for that, but I can think of two reasons.

One is that God is working in the very long term. There can be a considerable space of distance and time between moral action and moral effect. Christians believe we will be rewarded for the good we do, but we expect the greatest proportion by far to come after we move on from earth into eternity. This introduces another value into the ethical picture that non-believers do not recognize or participate in: faith. When asked what it meant to do the work of God, Jesus answered, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (John 6:27-29). Faith involves looking beyond any obvious or non-obvious return to our moral efforts, and trusting personally in the good God: that he will reward eventually what today seems just to be sacrifice and cost.

Rewards for a Christian are no Skinnerian motivator, where we do what we do because we see what we get from it. We do what we do because we see God before us, whom we love and trust, and whom we expect will do for our good works according to what good works deserve. Looking to God in faith is itself a very good thing. This relationship of trust is so basic that it is fundamentally what God looks for in his people.

(It’s important to note that I am speaking from the perspective of human motivational experience. I’m not painting a complete picture, and I do not have space to do so. If I did, I would also spend time on where that faith comes from. It is a gift freely given by God, not the product of our own merit or worthiness.)

But there is an even deeper reason God doesn’t work by double-entry bookkeeping. Ask any accountant: how do you balance a ledger when one side has infinity entered on it? It can’t be done.

There is a cost to be paid in return for our evil; but by his infinite love God chose to go to the ultimate degree. In Jesus Christ he himself paid that price infinitely, through his death on the cross. This opens the door for a second outcome for evil. I said a moment ago that “goodness stands against evil. How could it be otherwise?” and I spoke of punishment as the natural return for evil in a good universe. But God in his infinite creativity and love found a way to stand against evil without punishing each of us as goodness would otherwise demand. He paid the cost; he took the punishment himself. Punishment has been accomplished on our behalf. Now it is not absolutely required of God’s goodness that he punish evil; he can express his goodness by redeeming evil.

First he redeems the evil one. That would be me. I am the evil one, screaming in the presence of my family, scaring them half to death. He has rescued me from punishment by taking it upon himself. He has freed me from the ultimate penalty for sin, opening the way for me to join in his kingdom of goodness and to experience his love without punishment. The Christian doctrines of justification and identification go even further than this, though. God has not only freed me from the penalty of sin, he forgives my sin so completely that he no longer views me as “the evil one.” I have become the redeemed one instead. I am adopted into his family, a welcomed son, like the prodigal. This is available for all who will receive it as a gift from God.

God also redeems evil. He does not make evil good; he overcomes it instead, and causes good to come from it. Here too we must tread respectfully, recognizing that this is often far from easy to see from our temporal perspective. Sometimes we can figure it out. I was badly mistreated in a significant working relationship for two years, from about 2001 to 2003. It was painful every day for two years, and it was wrong. I look back on that now, though, and I can see how God used that experience to grow me up into a much stronger person than I could ever have been without that training. I couldn’t see the good in it at the time, but it’s clear enough now. Because I understand God’s character and how he works, I believe someday I’ll be able to say the same for all the other evils I have experienced.

How then does this have anything to do the question we started with? Here’s the connection. God has redeemed me from my own evil ways. He overcomes evil. For that, I am eternally grateful and filled with love toward God. I look back at that day in the motel and I say, “because God loves me and has lifted me out of that, never again!” Whether there is punishment for it or not, “never again!” For God has called me in love to something higher, and in love I respond to that call. This is a major factor in Christian ethical motivation. The closer we draw to God, the greater a factor it becomes, for the love of God becomes more real and more motivationally powerful in our ways.

When God redeems us, by the way, he also empowers and leads us through his Spirit to do good beyond our un-redeemed capacity. This is another topic I lack space to explore as much as it deserves, though I did touch on it earlier in this series.

To summarize, then, here is the answer to our question.

1. Yes, Christians may be motivated by rewards and punishments. The Bible does not hesitate to hold incentives out before us. It is in the nature of a good universe, ruled by a good God, that good would be answered by good, and that evil would be answered by correction. This is common to all humanity and there is nothing inherently wrong with it.

2. Christians’ very attitude toward rewards can be an expression of trust in the personal God who assures these rewards over the very long haul. We place our good works in deposit with him, as it were, expecting that deposit to be repaid; and that expectation is an expression of our attitude toward the One who holds that deposit. God values that attitude of trust. It is itself a good, one standing near the peak of all virtues.

3. Rewards and punishments are not the whole story for Christians’ ethical motivation. We also live and act according to love for God and a desire to live his ways in love, regardless of any rewards.

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I promised a post on the question, “Isn’t Christian ethics a matter of self-interest after all?” It’s turning out to be two posts rather than one. Some of what I write on this will be exploratory and experimental, the product of my own reflection and not others’ thinking. That means I’m especially wide open to discussion and correction as may be needed.

The question arises because the Bible promises rewards for those who follow God in his way and on his terms, and warns of consequences for those who do not. If that is so, then isn’t this just like secular ethics at its worst, “looking out for number one”? What makes biblical ethics any different?

Please note carefully what kind of question this is. It’s not about whether Christian ethics are true, but, what is the nature of Christian ethical beliefs, or what is true of ethics if Christian ethics are true?

I find that secularists discussing ethics consistently point toward practical ethics: what does it take for people to understand and to do what is good? Many times they have said that’s all that really matters anyway; what difference does it make to discuss ethics except in context of the way we actually act? Christian ethical considerations cannot begin there, however, but must start with the character of God. God is eternal and infinite, and he is good. Hence reality at its deepest foundation is good. It’s not just a matter of how we act, it’s a matter of the way all reality is constituted.

Before going on with the argument I want to invite believers (and others) reading this to pause and reflect on that: reality, at its deepest foundation, is good. It doesn’t always seem that way, but it is, because God is good. There is always a deeply personal side to this. Chances are you’re having a significant struggle of some sort, and the deep goodness of which I speak is not clearly apparent. It’s not that all that is, is good. It’s that where there is evil, God is at work correcting and redeeming it, restoring goodness. He’s doing it in his own time and in his own way, but that he is at work is as certain as the rising of the sun. To experience his goodness requires us to go deep in communion with him: and that is part of his purpose in working this way. He wants us to connect deeply with him that way.

Back to the question I started with: is Christian ethics a matter of disguised self-interest? No, because Christian ethics is not just a matter of what it takes to think and do what is good. Christian ethics is about what actually is good, and what would be good even if no human ever lived to practice or experience it. Love, truth, and faithfulness (to name a few) are good not for some instrumental reason, such as fulfilling persons’ maximum happiness. They are good because they are of the nature of a good God.

One effect of goodness being grounded in deepest reality is that good produces good. To do good will naturally lead to good outcomes. I use “naturally” here not in the sense of natural (scientific) laws, but in the sense that it is in the nature of God’s creation to align with the principle that good leads to good. This progress is frustrated and thwarted in many ways, but only on the surface and only for a time; for the goodness of God’s work will prevail.

I’m sure my skeptical detractors are already preparing to pounce with something like, “What you’re writing is just fairy-tale fluff, a deluded hope that some invisible God will come through for you some day by-and-by.” Let’s be sure, though, if you want to dispute what I’ve written, that you dispute the actual point in discussion. The question was not whether Christian ethical beliefs are true or false; it was whether Christian ethics are based on self-interest. The answer to that question must be based on Christians take to be true about ethics. What I have written here—whether you agree with it or not—is what Christianity takes to be true about ethics.

The next post in this series will be based in large part on this: goodness is fundamental to all of what is real, and when humans practice what is good, we are rising toward reality.

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Russell Blackford wrote this “metaethical, neo-Humean limerick.” I looked for a copyright notice on his page and didn’t find one, so I’m hoping he won’t mind if I bring it over here in full, for discussion. First rule: whatever you think of the message, at least enjoy the limerick-ness of it!

Though an “is” alone won’t give support
To a value, a norm, or an “ought”,
If you mix on the fire
Both belief and desire,
You’ll get thought of an “ought” of a sort.

[From Metamagician and the Hellfire Club]

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